Happy To Be Here :)

I've been reading here for a few weeks now and am currently doing a fishless cycle with ammonia in a recently acquired 55 gallon tank that I intend to become a planted community tank.

Just the other day I read jetajockey's threads on seeded sponge filters from angelsplus, and I ordered one of those today in hopes that I might be able to have a few fish in the tank before Christmas.

I can't complain about my cycle to date; ammonia is being converted with increasing speed, nitrites are sky high, and nitrates are climbing respectably. I am hoping the seeded filter will lead to a much faster conversion of nitrites than it appears is the usual case while awaiting bacteria proliferation.

I'm retired, have had a couple of tanks in the past, including a saltwater years ago. I appreciate the wealth of information I see here, and the apparent general friendliness.

We also are active with our dogs. The younger one is training for "versatility" (known until last January as Schutzhund). The older has that training and more, but is now arthritic enough that it is best she keep all four feet on the ground more often than has been her habit in the past.

In addition to my husband and son, I also have a grandson & grand-daughter upon whom I dote, I hope appropriately.

Glad you got an active filter. For my first tank I did pure ammonia with fishless cycling without an active filter, and it took about 3-4 weeks. For my quarantine tank I had bought active filters twice thus far because I had decided to disinfect my quarantine tank with bleach after an unexplained death, and this had to start over again. The first time I got an active filter I had the expectation of instant cycle and was disappointed because it took a week to fully cycle with the active filter, then I thought about it and realized that fully cycled in one week is actually really good. After the aforementioned unexplained death and bleach disinfection, I tossed that filter and got a new one, and this time I was too busy with life to remember to add ammonia every day to the quarantine with active filter, but even with this irregular feeding this filter cycled in two weeks - which is as good as Tetra Safe Start fish-in cycle, but I got a very good filter out of it as well. So I would say that active filters are definitely worth it, even though they may not always result in an instant cycle, but they do speed up the cycle a lot.